Twitter and New York Times test feature that lets users tweet highlighted sentences

The New York Times last week tested a feature in which users can tweet specific highlighted sentences within an article.

How the feature works: Readers either click or tap on highlighted text, and the Tweet box will automatically open with the text ready to go as a tweet, complete with a link to the article, which directs readers to that particular spot within the piece where the sentence was drawn from.

Twitter said in a blog post that the story chosen for the experiment, “The God of ‘SNL’ Will See You Now” — about the process of auditioning with Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels — was tweeted 11 times more than the average of the top 500 shared NYT stories from last month.

It remains to be seen, though, if Twitter will release this feature to other media outlets in the near future. In its blog post, it pointed out instead that any news organization can embed inline Tweets by using a third-party widget from Save Publishing, for example.

➤ The New York Times tests a new Tweet feature [Twitter Blog]

Image Credit: Ramin Talaie via Getty Images